Common Sense and the No S Diet

One thing that I have learned for certain while doing the NO S Diet is that you cannot throw COMMON SENSE out the window and expect the NO S Diet to work. As much as I truly love love yes love the NO S Diet it is not an alchemical miracle that defies the laws of physics.

Topics that come up fairly frequently on the NO S Diet boards are:

whats filling your plate
the size of your plate
the size of your portions
S days gone wild
and
why am I not losing weight?
or even more discouraging,
why am I gaining weight?

To me the answers are obvious. But I am living in my own little world with my twenty plus years of searching and researching information on eating disorders, eating for health, etc. I have to step back and think, maybe these other folks have been doing other things with their time and have not yet figured out that ANY diet consisting of junk will not make you healthy, slim or functional.

SO to me, it is common sense that I think tells me, that I need to put some whole grains, veggies, fruit and/or healthy source of protein on my plate. Now I don't make sure every plate has an equi-portion of these items ... that would be irritating for me, I have already done and fallen off the Zone Diet (grin)! But I do make it a goal to have a whole grain, a fruit, something green and some healthy protien at least once a day. THIS is sustainable. FOR ME, it's also common sense. My body needs nutrients so I can think and move ... cheesy, white floury, fried THINGS may taste good but they are NOT feeding my body. AND BTW if you stop eating so much of that crud your palette will actually change and you will find it not tasting so good. What I am saying is this: Doesn't COMMON SENSE tell us that we need to put some actual, real food on our plates each day?

As far as the size of the plates and portions go, I honestly don't worry my pretty little head too much about that. I am pretty comfortable with a lot of blank space on my plate if I am not too hungry or very little blank space on my plate if I am eating a bunch of fruit and veggies and/or very hungry. Sometimes people get on and say things like smaller people need to eat less food than larger people. Like Reinhard is trying to put something over on us by telling us we can eat three plates of food a day. I find this confusing, but maybe its just an indication that COMMON SENSE is not fully functional. I don't read eating three plates a day as ... YOU MUST PUT AS MUCH CRAPPY, JUNKY FOOD ON YOUR PLATE AS YOU CAN FIT. Maybe this is the problem. Maybe some people read those three plates and the freedom to put whatever you want to them as "instruction" while I read them as "maximum" boundary and then fill in the actual amount I need to eat with COMMON SENSE. I mean ... isn't it common sense that a smaller person will need to eat less than a larger person? Or is there something I am just missing?

As far as S days gone wild there is much hooha about how many restrictions, what kinds of restrictions and what does "sometimes" mean? and "sometimes" I read this stuff and I am like, is it just me, or has COMMON SENSE completely fleed, bolted the premises for fear that we might discover that the No S Diet is really a straight forward and simple proposition once we apply a little COMMON SENSE?

DIETING is restricting what you eat. THERE are SOOOOOOOOOOO many ways we can RESTRICT our natural appetite. Interestingly enough our natural appetite can be rather strong. Funny thing. It finds away to rebel, get even, punish us for our restrictions ... binging, overeating ... then we gain weight. THE S Days on the No S Diet, IMHO, are for taking off the choke leash. Maybe your little puppy of an appetite pees on the floor, digs up your favorite flowers and runs away with you chasing it down the street. But if you don't give it those moments of freedom, how are you going to know what you are really dealing with?

What I love about the NO S Diet is the freedom I have attained. I take my appetite off the choke leash every weekend and NWS day. Somtimes I am embarrassed by my appetites behavior, sometimes I am appalled, but sometimes I am pleased, proud, exuberant and exultant. I know, I know, you need those restrictions. I know, I know they keep your puppy manageable.

But I wonder, when your N days start going bad, is it because you have insisted on some sort of dietary restriction EVERY DAY, i.e. not letting up on the S days, or is it because the NO S Diet doens't work and you need to resort to even more and greater restrictions to lose weight?

Metaphysically the S/NWS Days are a great way to get to know the real you, in the meantime Common Sense and Keeping Those N Days Green really does go a long way in acheiving success and weight loss on the NO S Diet.

And N Days are For Stopping ...

Days like today are days that you gotta' love an N day. After way too many "holiday treats", waking up to the knowledge that fresh wholesome food would be the only thing to pass between my lips today was a great feeling.

It helped me not beat myself up for yesterday's food indiscretions and get on with the business of living.

No more "Can't work, too busy eating" for me. After eight plus months of green N days, I know on many levels that Monday means getting back to work and green N days. When I first started the NO S diet, EVERY Monday was kind of like hell.

Why? I simply wasn't used to stopping.

I beleived that I was powerless over sweets and if anything sugary passed between my lips I would be unable to stop myself from the gorging that would inevitably follow and would it go on ... well for days.

A pretty useful "belief" if you want to be "Can't work, too busy eating."

Or if you just like to indulge in the sugary stuff. Think about it. If I believe one bite and I can't stop ... think of all the times and all the ways I will be able to give myself license to indulge ... and NOT STOP.

The beauty of the NO S Diet is that on N days you stop. YOU JUST STOP. No matter what else you believe you can commit to no snacks, no sweets and no seconds on those N days. And if you are like me, you will learn something AMAZING.

That you have a lot more power over that sweet stuff than you realized. You just needed to apply your willpower to STOPPING not to CONVINCING yourself and other people that you have a problem you don't really have.

Now if you are like me and your inner two year old has been eating nonsensical amounts of the sweet stuff for years, its going to be TOUGH to STOP. But if you make up your mind you can do it, I beleive that you will. Cause after all, that's what N days are for ... stopping ...

Photo: Grilled Wild Mahi-Mahi, organic herb salad with EVOO, steamed broccoli with EVOO, Navel Orange

Consistency is the Key to Results

Years ago I used to do the original Firm workout videos. They had an abs video with about five ab segments. There was an adorable italian guy in the videos who at the end of one of the segments said "Consistency is the key to results."

That particular phrase has struck with me through the years as the truth of it is proved over and over again in my life. And following the No S Diet it has been proved true once again.

Consistently keeping my N days green, pretty much no matter what I eat or how much I eat on my S/NWS days has been the key to my results on the No S diet. Consistently eating only three one plate/bowl meals every N day and not eating snacks, sweets or seconds has paid huge dividends for me.

Sometimes I fret that I "ate too much" on an S/NWS day. But the truth really is "consistency is the key to results." As long as I have kept my N days green, the weight has slowly but steadily come off and now it is staying off.

Once again I am truly learning, it is consistency over the long term that is the key to permanent and lasting results.

... Nothing You Can't Comfortably Do Without

By cutting out [snacks, sweets, and seconds] during the week, you cut out plenty, but nothing you can't comfortably do without.

p.5 The No S Diet by Reinhard Engels

The "nothing you can't comfortably do without" is probably what is debatable for some of us, especially at the beginning. In a culture, where "well-known" fitness gurus are telling us to eat every five minutes to keep our metabolism up and so ... god forbid, we won't get hungry ... many of, especially in the beginning wonder ... can we, in fact, comfortably do without snacks?

The truth of the matter is that in the first few weeks, it might not be so "comfortable" to forego snacking. But it is truly amazing how quickly our body adapts when we are strict with our N days.

Others, of us, sugar babies that we are, fret. No chocolate? No soda? No snagging a handful of jelly beans when we cruise by the receptionist's desk? And HOW WILL we say "no" to the rest of the ubiquitous sweets that are offered, pushed, insisted upon? Perhaps in the beginning we are not so comfortable with "no sweets" either.

Our "no thank you's" are rusty and flimsy, perhaps even a bit wimpy from atrophy and little use. But, once again, it is truly amazing how quickly we can adapt when we are strict on our N Days.

And let's not neglect "no seconds". In a world where our eyes are much bigger than our stomachs, the concept of "no more" may seem daunting. But, once again, by keeping those N days green, in what is almost no more than a blink of the eye, you just might learn that "hunger" actually feels good and "less really is more."

So that, in not too long, perhaps in just the amount of time it takes to join the "21 day club" we have arrived at a point, where No Snacks, No Sweets, and No Seconds are something we can comfortably do without on our N Days and look forward to on our S days.

Photo: Yummy Lunch of Grilled Albacore, Sauted Spinach with Loads of Garlic and EVOO and Spiced Yams

Hexagram 61: Limitation

Through the years I have dabbled in studying different religions and philosophies. One of my favorite "soothing" books is the I Ching. I am very fond of the "taoist" strain in its teachings, not so much the "confucianist."

Since I have been on the NO S Diet, I have often thought of Hexagram 61: Limitation and how enlightening it was the first time I read it. In a culture where "more" is never enough and "too much" hardly seems like a respectable amount, the wisdom of "limitation" is like good medicine.

Let's look at some excerpts from the Wilhelm translation below:

The Judgement

Limitation. Success.
Galling limitation must not be persevered in.

The Image

A lake is something limited. Water is inexhaustible. A lake can only contain a definite amount of the infinite quantity of water; this is its peculiarity. In human life too the individual achieves signficance through the discrimination and setting of limits ... Unlimited possibilites are not suited to man; if they existed his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, a man's life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted. The individual attains significance as a free spirit only by surrounding himself with these limitations and by determining for himself what his duty is.

To me traditional diets are a "galling limitation", i.e. limits that lead to the "misfortune" of failure if "persevered" in. The"diet backlash" or binge that follows every diet is a good example of such "misfortune". The No S Diet, on the other hand, gives us just enough limits to be appropriately discriminating in our daily eating lives.

The No S Diet is definitely NOT a "galling limitation." It is just the right amount of limits to help us acheive "success" and get on with the business of living our otherwise fascinating lives.

Anxiety

One of the many reasons I used to overeat and binge was to handle anxiety. I am not necessarily talking about huge or crippling anxiety, I am talking more about the "garden variety" kind of anxiety of living a "normal" life in the "modern world." The somewhat ongoing background tensions caused by interruptions, miscommunications, minor daily frustrations and obstructions.

This morning I accompanied a loved one to the hospital for an outpatient procedure. Hospitals, Parking Lots, Doctors, Consent Forms and basically the realm of the "unknown" loomed before me and my loved one. In the past, I might have been completely "unaware" of my anxiety, moving like shifting sands just below the surface of my consciousness, and used the experience to be "really hungry" all of a sudden.

But let's see, yesterday and today were N days. Hmmmmmmmm ... not a lot of room their for "food" subterfuge.

I began to realize last night that I was bit worried, just because anytime someone goes under anesthesia there is always THAT RISK. Small, but present. Curiously, I focused on how would I handle breakfast which was actually concrete and helpful. After much back and forth I decided the best bet would be to pack it and take it with me.

That is what I did this morning. Packed my healthy one bowl breakfast and threw it in my purse with a spoon. SO there I was in the waiting room ... tick tock tick tock ... the time was past when they were supposed to call me. Other patients "drivers" had already been called. I got to feel all my anxiety. Not mind bending. Not extremely high level. Just enough that prior to No S I might have ended up with some unwanted pastry from the coffee cart or some unsatisfying fare from the hospital cafe ... both reasons to indulge MORE when it was all over and I was free to leave the hospital, discharge my loved one, and then be free to ... well ... eat.

But that's just not how it went to day. I ate my one bowl. Satisfying as it always is. Lived through the anxiety. Tended to my loved one. Had a nice one plate lunch and got to work when it was all said and done. A "normal" day.

HALLELUJAH!

Who would have thought that I would have ever chosen anxiety over a donut?

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween all of you NOSers!

Bwahahhahahhahahhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

This can definitely be a HAPPY Halloween for all of us. Myself, I am taking Halloween as an official NWS day. A couple of weeks ago I stacked up on my stash for the trick or treaters who will come by tonight, but because of my "time" on NO S they have been "safely" stashed in the closet untouched.

TRICK OR TREAT?

It is your choice.

Call it an NWS day and have a Treat or pass and go for the Trick.

It is your choice!

Me ... my treats today will be fresh donuts from our local donut shop, vegan nachos and a wickedly delicious Caramel Machiatto! Teeheeeheeee!

Photo: Halloween TREATS!

"Glass Ceilings"

"Glass Ceiling" is a concept Reinhard uses for "containing" alcohol consumption. I have been using it for the past two months to contain caffiene/coffee consumption and it has been working really well. I quit drinking coffee over four years ago because I could not stick with reasonable amounts. After nosing for six month I decided to experiment with using the "glass ceiling" concept for caffiene/coffee.

Works like a charm. Now I can enjoy my coffees twice a day, once after breakfast and another, usually after lunch. Then that's it I am done. I have only "broken" the "glass ceiling" once ... and that was an S day.

Reinhard has come up with so many useful ideas for managing our habits and disciplining our appetites. I am so glad I stumbled upon his book The No S Diet in Barnes and Noble this past March. It has changed my life and had an impact that the gazillion diet books that I bought before cannot even touch!

I love being "normal" and I love my "drinky" things. I am so glad that I get to MAXIMIZE my ENJOYment of them by using No S Diet concepts like "S days" and "glass ceilings"

Photos: Two Starbucks Coffees

I Love Veggies

I suppose I am fortunate because I love veggies. No broccoli haters here. ANY vegetable steamed or sauteed with a generous dollop of EVOO (extra virgin olive oil), salt and/or pepper is yummy to me.

I know! I know! We all talk about eating protien and making protien the central part of meals, but for me, my only "rule of thumb" is this:

I try to make sure that not a day goes by without a nice serving of GREEN!

The No S Diet is great for getting in your veggies because they are a GREAT way to fill up your plate. Without the higher natural sugars of fruit and loaded with even MORE MINERALS, veggies are the road to exuberant good health.

Like I said, I suppose I am fortunate, I have loved veggies since I was a kid. The simpler the better. Great tasting, fresh vegetables don't need to be drowned in heavy sauces, cheesy toppings, or fried and breaded. BLEYCH! is what I say to drowning all that natural goodness!

For today, try filling up your plate with nice, fresh veggies.

Photo: Mesquite Grilled Halibut, Steamed Green Beans and Carrots with EVOO and Celtic Sea Salt

Just Looking

I use to LOVE LOVE LOVE Von's Cake. It was my "big deal" for such a long time. Years. Sweet. Secret. Forbidden.




Now sometimes on S days, I think - Von's cake! Wouldn'cha love it? I go to the store and I stand at the case and I look at my favorites ... white birthday cake, carrot cake and ...



chocolate birthday cake. Then after a few minutes I realize that I really don't WANT any Von's cake and that JUST LOOKING is enough!

WOW!

That is CERTAINLY an UNEXPECTED result of the NO S Diet!

Photos: Von's White Birthday Cake, Von's Carrot Cake, Von's Chocolate Birthday Cake

Pre-disapproved

I love this little gem from the No S Diet book ...

"You're pre-disapproved, so forget it and move onto something else." p119

Being pre-disapproved definitely keeps things simple.

Someone stands in front of me with a sweety thing and/or a snacky thing and a big smile on their face.

"Here I brought this specially for you cause I KNOW it's your favorite."

Quick internal reconnoitering - is this an N day? Yes? Hmmm ... that means I am PRE-DISAPPROVED for ANYTHING sweety and anything snacky I can't or don't want to put on my one plate. Do I want to put THAT particular SNACKY THING on my one plate today? Heaven's no.

"Gee, that was so nice of you to think of me. I'll just take it and wrap it up for later."

Person's smile fades as I swipe it from their hands and quickly disappear.

On the way to lunch I make three points free-throwing it into the garabage. Better in the waste can than on my waist band.

Pre-disapproved.

Keeping life simple on the No S Diet.

Bad Ass

If you have been following my blog for any length of time, then you might remember that I took some of the $aving$ from following the No S Diet and hired a personal trainer at my gym in May.

Let's see that was four-and-a-half months ago.

IN the beginning the training manager gave me five complimentary sessions and trained me himself. VERY GOOD. And very nice. Then I was assigned another trainer. Pretty tuff on me, but that is what I asked for.

Yesterday I went in for my session and that trainer was no longer with the gym. Sigh. So they assigned me to another trainer. Young. Nordic. Uh huh.

I decided to take it in stride. We discussed my goals for the day and settled on some circuit training. He wanted to assess my fitness level.

So he had me start with 25 pushups, 25 deadlifts and 25 pull-ups. Now let me remind you that I used to not be able to do even one full body push-up. KNEES PLEASE!

Well, I dropped down and pumped out 25 perfect form full-body pushups and he was ... wide-eyed (probably not more so than myself) and said I was "bad ass". We continued through the circuit and he was apparently sufficiently impressed.

He took me to the other side of the gym and had be do another circuit of squat press things (not sure what they were exactly) and then these squat jumps and chin pull up things, in circuits of 21, 18, 15, 12 and 9.

He basically told me that most of the other people coming in for training weren't up to doing this ... COOL! When I was dying at the end, he said with a smile on his face, "That is what you get for being a bad ass."

As a forty-six year old female, who has in the past year-and-a-half been on a passionate journey to claim her inner IRON WOMAN - big smile - I felt like being able to pump out those 25 full body pushups and have this twenty-something jock call me a "bad ass" was pretty much a testament to not only the body reshaping that I have accomplished, but the development of FUNCTIONAL STRENGTH as well.

VERY COOL! I LOVE THIS STUFF! AND I LOVE BEING A "BAD ASS"!

Photo: One Bowl of Watermelon, definitely think this fits into the "maximize your real estate" category

Day Twenty

Today I am thinking about substance over volume.

For many many many even a countless number of years I was convinced.
It was the sugar. It was the white flour. If I could BUT eliminate these
two particular substances from my life, my diet, my plate ... my desires.
I would be enlightened. Liberated.
Freed at last.

This went on for twenty-one years.
I think ... that is KIND OF a really PRETTY LONG TIME.
Don't you?
Yeah.

So. I could't do it.
I failed. Miserably. Again. And again.
And yet one more time.

But then, almost ten years ago I got this book
The Seven Secrets of Thin People.
They had a variety of "exercises" in eating awarness.
I remember one.
I used to drink coffee.
I drank it for about five years.
It was something my husband turned me on to.
Actually what he turned me onto was this concoction of chocolate, milk, and sugar, with a little bit of coffee...
a cafe mocha.

THAT I LIKED.
I learned how to make cafe mocha's at home. For one of our anniversaries he bought me a nice big coffee mug ... Ziggy with outstretched hands I LOVE YOU THIS MUCH ... it was a huge coffee cup ... maybe more than a Venti.

I would chug three of those a day... my husband would come home after work and I would be
having heart palpitations. I am kind of sensitve to caffiene.

ANYWAY ... what I noticed when I was doing one of those "eating awareness exercises" after chugging one of those mugs on an empty stomach was that the volume was too great and I wanted to binge.

Apparently VOLUME was just as significant a trigger for binging as SUBSTANCE.
Very Interesting.

But never you mind, it was a piece of enlightenment that I did not know quite what to do with so I did nothing. Except sometimes when I had been "doing good" with my eating and food and then gone out on what I call a restaurant binge, and then not be able to stop on the way home, or when I got home, or even after I had been home for quite some time ...

this little though would niggle in the back of my mind ...
is it Substance AND Volume? Ot is it just substance?
Could it possibly be JUST VOLUME?

Well, I am on day twenty on the No S Diet as this day's blog title attests to and I am now certain.
It is JUST VOLUME.
Why am I so sure?
I started getting all mystical last night.
And then my heart opened and I became all weepy this morning about the
majesty, beauty, awesomeness and wonder of life.

Folks, these are spiritual feelings. Yup.
It is volume and by reducing my VOLUME consistently by pretty meticulously following the precepts of the NO S diet ... my soul is awakened from its food coma.

I think I will get out to the park this afternoon and praise the faeries of flower and field and raise my eyes in gratitude to the divinity of the Sun God.

I have been reborn.

Day Seventeen

Well this is just almost too easy.

What am I going to do? For over 40 years food has been a struggle, an issue, this THING in my life.

What will I eat? What won't I eat? When will I eat? Who shall I eat with?
Maybe I should just eat alone.

This is just not really difficult. I think it is not difficult because it is kind of black and white. I know we are supposed to be beyond black and white as a species ... but look ...
how completely HELPFUL it is in this regard.

No more arguments with self. I should have that. No you shouldn't. I want that. No you don't. I need that. I don't think so.
Years and years of all that and now the conversation has been transformed.

I want that. What's today? Oh. It's Wednesday. Let's see, that is not breakfast, lunch or dinner, then no. You are not going to have that.
Oh.

But ... NOW I have S days ... maybe they should be renamed SUPER DAYS!
Something to look forward to ...
that need for pleasure ....
Something tells me that these are things that we won't ever get beyond as a species.

Hmmm ... this makes No S kind of ingenius.

Day Sixteen

My goodness this is fun.

You might think that the "success" I am experieincing on the No S Diet is somehow typical for me.

I want to assure you that it is not.
Perhaps that is why I am so thrilled and excited ... about it all.

Simplicity is something that is somewhat in vogue ... but how do we actually apply it, live it, jump on the simplicity bandwagon?

Reinhard Engels has created a very simple diet ... so simple it can be described in fourteen words. Kind of profound.

I am becoming more productive and organized in my daily life. To me this is very exciting.

For many years I have grabbed the magazines from the grocery store rack, caught the news stories on tv, trolled the internet, got sucked in by a few infomercials and bought the books ... oh and then there were all the meetings.

I wonder how much time all that took.
Buying the new foods for the new food plans, cleaning out the cupboards and refrigerator of the old foods for no food plan, over exercising, refusing to exercise ....
Add in the binging itself ... oh and then the recovering.

From ALL THAT.

How much time is that?
I think I am going to have some time on my hands.

Sanity, more time, pleasure in eating.
WHAT is not to like about that?